An apology, 70 years in the coming, was finally given to Canadian prisoners of war held in brutal Japanese work camps during the Second World War.

The apology was delivered on Dec. 8, at 4:10 p.m. Japan time, by Toshiyuki Kato, Japan’s parliamentary vice-minister for Foreign Affairs, to a delegation of three surviving PoWs.

“Japan has apologized several times in the past, but it has always been for political reasons,” Derrill Henderson, the national secretary of the Hong Kong Veterans Commemorative Association (HKVCA) told Legion Magazine. The association is made up of mostly children and grandchildren of the Hong Kong Veterans Association of Canada (HKVA) whose members were all prisoners. “The veterans didn’t want any Canadian politicians in the room. It was just the veterans and the minister.”